Collarts students get professional with DiGiCo SD11
Published: ASIA
AUSTRALIA: The Australian College of the Arts (Collarts) in South Melbourne recently invested in a DiGiCo SD11 console for its degree-level courses in audio production, music performance and creative industries management. Once the time came to replace an existing console, associate dean and head of audio at Collarts, Dr Paul Doornbusch contacted the collage’s A/V supplier Soundcorp for advice.
Collarts features two live rooms, a complete post-production studio and two fully equipped student labs for production and composition. ‘Young people these days have grown up listening to digital recordings and CDs, and that's the sound they expect be it live or recorded,’ said Dr Doornbusch. ‘The SD11 lets us produce that. The first time I heard it, I said “Oh yes! That's the sound!”. It's completely replaced our old analogue console and all the patching.’
With the console being used primarily for the purpose of educating, it proved logical for Dr Doornbusch to give students access to a system used by engineers who mix for some the biggest headliners in the world. ‘It made sense to go with the SD11,’ he added. ‘The students love it; they have seen it used in concerts. The recall functions and effects really make it easy to show them what's going on.
‘The flexibility of the HPF/LPF are really impressive,’ he continued. ‘The compression is also very nice. Having it all inside the console makes things so much simpler and cleaner. The transfer from A to D is much simpler now. When you're teaching students signal flow, it's highly beneficial to be able to keep things easy to understand. The other great thing is that we're now teaching them how to use something that is widely used everywhere in the industry. This will give them an immediate advantage in real world environments.’
‘I just love it,’ enthused head of music performance at Collarts, Gene Shill. ‘I notice a lot of small things that make sense. The colour coding across the console is also really helpful and the size of the effects dials when they pop up mean that even the students with bigger hands can still access the controls.’
The SD11 was distributed by Group Technologies.